On Saturday Feb. 26, after PSG’s brilliant 3-1 win against Saint-Etienne in Paris in which he shone and twice set up Kylian Mbappe for goals, Lionel Messi travelled to Barcelona on his private jet.
Before you jump to any conclusions, though: it was for his wife’s birthday. Antonela turned 34 that weekend, and of course her husband was always going to be there to celebrate with her, Cesc Fabregas and his wife Daniella, and Luis Suarez and his wife Sofia. But there was one thing the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner insisted on: he travelled with his PSG track suit on. It would have been easy to change after the game at the Parc des Princes, but he didn’t want to.
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“He wanted to show his colours. He knew photographs and TV crews would wait for him at the airport, and he didn’t want people to maybe have the wrong idea about why he was coming back to Barcelona. He didn’t want any confusion or rumours. It was for Antonella’s big day, nothing else,” says a source at the French club.
You might find this significant (or not) given his fairly low-key season so far, but there is definitely a view that Messi and his family are feeling much more at home in Paris than ever before since their move in the summer.
Consider the seismic change for them all: it was a brutal, somewhat unexpected move after more than two decades of being settled in Barcelona. So many things were different in France compared to Catalonia, and the shock was real — even for Hulk, the Messi family’s big French Mastiff. But that adaptation is now behind them.
Messi’s two oldest sons, Thiago (nine years old) and Mateo (six), are now playing for the PSG youth teams — Ciro, only three, is obviously too young — and Leo watches them train and play as much as possible. The boys are happy in their international school and have made plenty of friends. The family have also joined a tennis club near their house in Neuilly sur Seine in the…
Source : espn
